by Nate Ryan, USA TODAY Sports

by Nate Ryan, USA TODAY Sports

AVONDALE, Ariz. -- Phoenix International Raceway boiled over in a bubbling cauldron of cantankerous aggression Sunday that turned 3,400-pound cars into battering rams and threatened to turn the Sprint Cup garage into a holding cell for the Maricopa County sheriff's department.

Amidst a nationally televised ruckus of crew chiefs trading caustic threats and crewmembers throwing haymakers, the voice of reason came from the driver whose words could be carrying a lot more weight a week from now.

"The retaliation is out of control in this sport," Keselowski, 28, said. "We've got a bunch of drivers that feel like they have to retaliate or they're being challenged as a man, and that's ridiculous. It's not what this sport needs. I don't think it's good for anybody, and it's going to get somebody hurt.

"I've said before we walk a line between chess players and daredevils, and we're not walking it very well."

A coronation is coming soon in NASCAR, and this inaugural champion will be unlike anything the sport has had before.

That's assured because Brad Keselowski, who can wrap up the title with a 15th or better in the season finale at Homestead-Miami Speedway, will be the first champion to be born after 1980 and that will lend a decidedly different face of NASCAR.

He was the only driver tweeting live updates from his No. 2 Dodge. But after his sixth in the AdvoCare 500, he was foreshadowing how else the sport might change with him as its lead ambassador.

In an angry but articulate diatribe littered with colorful vulgarities, the Penske Racing driver made a strong case for redefining the limits of NASCAR's "Boys, Have at It" policy, which he felt seemed rather absurd after he was accused of having a "death wish" for racing Jimmie Johnson too hard for the lead at Texas Motor Speedway a week earlier.

"I spent a whole week being bashed by a half a dozen drivers about racing hard at Texas and how I'm out of control and have a death wish, and then I see ... that," he said. "That's (ridiculous). That's all you can call that. These guys just tried to kill each other. I get called an (expletive) for racing hard, and I see ... that, and it just pisses me off.

"It's just ridiculous, and they should be ashamed. It's embarrassing."

This isn't an easy argument to make. Some of NASCAR's most indelible moments arise when driver acrimony reaches an apex. The 1979 Daytona 500 - generally regarded as the most famous race in history - ended with a fistfight on the backstretch.

It's regarded as old-school racing, and it's the brand of passion that was sucked from NASCAR as the sport became increasingly bleached by corporate sponsorship and its accompanying political correctness.

"Boys, Have at It" reintroduced vigilante tactics to the sport partly in hopes of re-injecting the drama, and Phoenix offered a firm reminder of why. Fans lit up social media channels with glee, and even drivers voiced their tacit approval.

"Who won the race, I mean the fight?" runner-up Denny Hamlin jokingly asked. "Who had the best hit?"

Said winner Kevin Harvick: "The sport was made on fights. We should have more fights. I like fights."

Keselowski, who narrowly averted disaster when Jeff Gordon wrecked Clint Bowyer late in Sunday's race, made a compelling case for why there's a limit to the positivity effected by building your brand around "self-policing" at 200 mph with hospital visits or worse as a possible byproduct.

"It just drives me absolutely crazy that I get lambasted for racing somebody hard without there even being a wreck and then you see stuff like this, and that's OK, from the same people that criticized me," he said. "It's OK to just take somebody out, but you race somebody hard, put a fender on somebody and try to go for the win, and you're an absolute villain, and that's ridiculous.

"That's not what this sport needs," Keselowski said. "It needs hard racing, it needs people that go for broke, try to win and put it all out there on the line, not a bunch of people that have anger issues."

The Penske Racing driver wasn't advocating outlawing drama in NASCAR, noting some of its best races have featured last-lap wrecks for the win that spawned brawls. But those were for checkered flags, not in the name of trivial paybacks.

It's a nuanced point - the kind that Keselowski has shown to be so adept at making. "The best drama is the performance and the result of the race for the lead," he said.